Too Much PvE?

Captain's Blog Stardate 92346.41

Last week I talked about the PvE Queue revamp which sounds awesome. In addition to that, we're getting a whole bunch of new missions being added to it. Just this week Bug Hunt and The Battle of Korfez were announced. I'm not going to get into specifics about what each of these missions entails (you can read about that in the dev blog) but what interests me is the reason behind these missions being added.

Speaking from what I see in the STO Academy fleet, a lot players mainly do the Borg STFs because they've been around forever, the strategies are well known, and therefore are easy ways to earn Dilithium. Some of the other missions in the PvE Queue get played too, but not as much as these. Is it like that all over STO? If so, why add more missions that people might not play as much?

My assumption is that Cryptic believes the challenges provided by Advanced and Elite will draw in players who want to prove that they are the best of the best. Players will log countless hours trying to improve their builds, strategize with friends, and replay these missions over and over until they are victorious.

So what happens when these new Elite missions become as easy as the ones we have now? Is that even possible? The way the devs make it sound, they won't ever be easy. Frankly I just don't know what to expect or think of it. I'm happy that we're getting more content and more challenges, but I just hope it's worth the effort they are putting into development. In the comments let me know what do you think of all this?

Written by Attilio on September 28, 2014 at 10:16 pm

Comments

lowiekestoa(Member) said...September 29, 2014 at 04:00 am

I guess, at least for part of it, I do agree with your reasoning, especially about known strategics and dil /stuff earning.

Me thinks that the expansion wants to address to the demand of more difficult play content and access to higher levels and thingies in the game.

I want to take advantage of this instance to bring up a moot point, I posted it on Facebook but cannot find it anymore.
When I begun playing, I guess 2-3 yeras ago, I can't remember that there was a weekly maintenance. I played, fell asleep, woke up and continued levelling up and going through the story lines at the most slowly way. Then server problems came more and more frequent. Then my captain got some lvl 50 privileges and they went to the rep system. I looked at it, was totally frustrated, removed account en turned my back at STO. Later on I could not go through life without STO, so created another account.

I could go on like this but the point is that in my endless phantasy world I believed that they were replacing bad code with new buggless code. I dug into the problems at hand with server and so on problems and discovered that there was a stack problem on the server side. I have no hard proof for this, but it is my opinion anyway. So I guessed, well, I lost my nice level 50 captain "traits" and gained a more and more stable playing environment.

Now at this point I seem to have hit hard bottom in my Utopian belief in a more stable game platform. Weekly maintenance is a given fact. Wow! WoT doesnt have this. Some upgrades back they went to another gaming engine. It runs on a single CPU core, and therefore was probable cheap. Can't take advantage of new hardware technologies. But it is a stable engine.Cryptic's implantation of their engine in STO is structurally instable. I referred to that in my facebook post, wich I believe has been deleted. I stress that I have no proof of all this and is my personal opinion. Regardless of that we seem to be stuck with weekly maintenance wich buggers me off. It hits spot on in my online time. (UTC +1 I am at)

Now I guess that they are trying to put in as much content that they can with this structural instable but managed situation. Implementing stuff that is potentially cash generating. My paranoid mind thinks that this will continue on till the point that we reached an unmanagable server situation and STOnline will become STOffline and bankrupt.

Well, I spilled my poison.

I hope I never ever reach the point that my frustration with all this reaches a point where I have to delete my accounts again. I guess I am a nerd/geek that has found a reality in Star Trek that is not to be found in real life. And i surely hope STO will prove to be STforeverO.

I want to stop at this point, I could go for (p)ages like this.

Just would like to end with; they are implementing a level-up route that at this point seems to have no end (can be expanded endlessly on software level) and is potentially cash generating.

I wouldn't say there is too much content, rather not enough balance in the rewards to create incentive to do them all. That leads to a lot of empty queues. There are probably some missions they could take out and nobody would notice, but for the most part it's nice having that variety. I just wish they would address the issue that keeps people from playing certain missions (namely the time vs reward balance). All that being said, I see the fed side is starting to get more and more like the KDF side, where if you want to run anything other than stf's you have to get a private team together because the public queues are empty. That's too bad because it prevents people from enjoying the diversity that should be available at end game.

Actually, I think what's being done is a re-balancing of the PVE queues. And I think it's a good idea. The problem with the current queue is that the elite STFs are the BEST way of earning dilithium - not the only way. It was simply that the STFs were some of the only PVE that offered elite dilithium rewards. But with the expansion, it looks like they're offering multiple-difficulty content for every faction. And that's great for spreading the attention around. Now people can earn rewards that are commensurate with their ability. Sure, newer players aren't going to earn the same rewards as more seasoned players, but that's as it should be. As their experience/skill grow, they'll earn better rewards.

I don't play the PVE queues. No offense meant to anyone who does, but the few times I played, people were jerks about a "noob" playing with them. It left a bad taste and I just haven't tried since. And a few other times I sat in queue for what seemed like forever before giving up. The few that I was interested in playing weren't desirable to other players. Now, if I play in a PVE Queue, it's with a group of people I know who are usually more tolerant of my questions and go slower so we can enjoy the mission.

Joining most of the PvE queues with strangers is widely seen as risky, perhaps for good reason. Clearly a lot of the new PvE content is aimed at organized fleets or groups of friends who take an 'elite' approach to the game. That's an approach I don't much care for, although I would like a chance to gain some of the rewards of participating in the more challenging PvE content. I'd just rather do it in a friendly environment, rather than with a bunch of stressed-out perfectionist types.

There is a wide variety of PvE queues to join, but the problem, as was stated above, is that many of the queues are not populated. I think that the STO staff needs to evaluate the popularity of the queues and address this issue, or all that variety is really wasted. Add more rewards to the less popular queues so that people do them more.

As long as PWE/Cryptic continue to dev the game for premium item power-ups (super consoles, ships, et cetera), and allow bonus stacking, we will have issues like those you've outlined. STO has never been a "hard" game, as long as you use the appropriate level equipment of high enough quality. When a player uses exceptional equipment the game becomes relatively easy, especially when team mates are similarly equipped. The new modes will be very challenging until they are either patched down (because players refuse to queue them), or average equipment levels rise). There will always be diminishing returns in PVE content, unless player damage output is capped and npc damage is boosted. This is because if the Devs code all content for the minority percentage of players that are fully kitted in premium min/max builds, other players will not join those games; wasting server space and clock cycles. To a greaty extent, we have already seen this phenomena in STO PvP ; where the majority player base refuses to be victimized by the game's "whales" and shuns the sub-game altogether. Until PWE/Cryptic strikes a balance between micro transaction profitability and content we're probably going to just see the situation you lament continue. Personally, I only do the hourlies and dailies for marks and dil, not because I like them, or the "wash, rinse, repeat" cycle. As long as PWE/Cryptic keep introducing story line content, I'll accept the grinds and just hope I don't get randomed with fools in PvE.

The only problem with wanting more missions from Cryptic is that once you've done it ... you've done it. Missions are a one-stop shop for almost everyone excepting those missions where the reward is worth repeating for. I'll bet that requires enough resources for Cryptic to put something else on a burner or leave in File 13. I hate to be yet another horn-tooter about this but, for mission fixes the Foundry *is* the better locale.